Freedom New Mexico As he continues to stretch out the timetable on a decision about whether to escalate the U.S. commitment to the war in Afghanistan, President Obama has asked for a province-by-province assessment of the tribal and other local leaders in that mountainous country. The ostensible reason is to try to figure out which […]

Freedom New Mexico On Wednesday, President Barack Obama signed into law legislation making it a federal crime to assault somebody due to his or her sexual orientation or gender identity. The legislation was named for Matthew Shepard, who tragically became a household name after dying from being brutally beaten and tied to a fence in […]

OSLO (AP) — President Barack Obama won the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize on Friday in a stunning decision designed to build momentum behind his initiatives to reduce nuclear arms, ease tensions with the Muslim world and stress diplomacy and cooperation rather than unilateralism. Obama said he was surprised and deeply humbled by the honor, and […]

OSLO (AP) — President Barack Obama won the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize on Friday in a stunning decision designed to build momentum behind his initiatives to reduce nuclear arms, ease tensions with the Muslim world and stress diplomacy and cooperation rather than unilateralism. Obama said he was surprised and deeply humbled by the honor, and […]

By Tibor Machan: Freedom New Mexico columnist Recently a woman identifying herself as calling for the Rasmussen Group asked my views on President Obama’s current and expected performance. I answered pretty much as anyone who knows me would expect. I said, in essence, that his economic policies sucked. I was also asked a bunch of […]

Freedom New Mexico President Barack Obama’s speech Wednesday to a U.N. General Assembly packed with more than 100 heads of state was a strange combination of modesty and chutzpah, of a change in tone designed to persuade people that more substantive changes in policy had occurred. Insofar as a more modest tone reflects an understanding […]

Freedom New Mexico Team Obama didn’t need this, but it’s important for the rest of us to know, especially as we listen to his address to Congress on health care, scheduled today. President Obama’s plans to increase the national government’s responsibility and power over health care have had a rough time of it this summer. […]

Freedom New Mexico Afghanistan, although slightly off the media radar as compared to town halls about health care or the death of Michael Jackson, is shaping up as having more potential to shape perceptions of President Obama’s tenure in office than any other issue. In contrast to Iraq, the president has taken possession of the […]

By Baxter Black: PNT columnist Michelle Obama’s organic gardening is good for all of us involved in agriculture. So few citizens have the time or interest or space to grow anything they eat, that they have no way to relate to the land and what it takes to make it fruitful. Even fewer know how […]

By Tibor Machan: Freedom New Mexico columnist Although I am no historian, I do have an interest in what happened and why, especially involving big economic events of the past. One such event is The Great Depression. I just attended a superb weeklong conference at Cato University, where not only did I present a couple […]

Freedom New Mexico President Barack Obama has appointed a worthy, even inspirational woman to be the country’s next surgeon general. Dr. Regina Benjamin founded the Bayou La Batre rural health clinic to serve an Alabama fishing village of 2,500. She has a refreshingly old-fashioned approach to her work, treating any and all patients regardless of […]

By Tibor Machan: Freedom New Mexico columnist By now few who pay attention can have missed President Obama’s enthusiastic embrace of pragmatism, especially when it comes to the administration’s economic policies. Nor is it a secret that nothing much the president is proposing seems to be working. But if one understands pragmatism at its most […]

Freedom New Mexico When the Obama administration took office, many people hoped it would relinquish, or at least not assert aggressively, some of the more extravagant expansions of executive power the Bush administration seized in fighting the global “war on terror” and the misbegotten war in Iraq. We had few such hopes. Presidents of both […]

By Tibor Machan: Freedom New Mexico columnist I don’t know what President Obama means when he says “We must all expect to sacrifice during these times.” But never mind the details. Does he want to enact laws that force us to sacrifice? Is that his job? What exactly does the president consider a sacrifice? Does […]

Freedom New Mexico President Barack Obama’s news conference Tuesday may have marked the beginning of the end of the administration’s honeymoon with the Washington establishment as personified by the Washington press corps. Although the president was still firmly in command of his audience, the questions were sharper and more pointed, a little less reverential than […]

Freedom New Mexico It is almost difficult to parody the incoherence of the Obama stimulus plan and administration statements about the state of the economy in the past couple of days: Although only 6 percent of the $787 billion stimulus package passed in January has been spent, it has done the trick nicely, and the […]

Freedom New Mexico President Obama’s address last week in Cairo, primarily directed toward Muslims in the Middle East but also toward an audience back home eager for signs of progress on issues that seem close to irresolvable, was an artful, nuanced and generally balanced invitation to discussion and diplomacy rather than hostility and conflict. Whether […]

By Tibor Machan: Freedom columnist Some of President Obama’s recent speeches have raised a vital issue that often lies in the background of particular policy discussions. For example, the president has made it abundantly clear that he is a pragmatist, especially about economic matters. And there is a perennial question involved here: Are there any […]

By Tom Philpott: Syndicated columnist As reported here last week, President Obama has asked Congress to phase in “concurrent receipt” for all Chapter 61 retirees — those who received a disability retirement from the Department of Defense. This week we explain more details of the plan which, if enacted, would boost pay for 103,000 veterans […]

Some may have noticed the profound conflicts President Obama must be having about whether to let justice take its course regarding the Bush presidency, or to let alleged crimes slide in the name of political expediency. This much is certain. Obama has inherited from Bush a generational economic crisis, an out-of-control budget, an awful jobs […]